Pdftools Release Notes

21 September 2026

Added​

• Accessible PDF/UA-1 output on the Convert to PDF and Archive as PDF/A-2 workflows, disabled by default:
  • Enable it per profile, or per job with the PDFUA job option.
  • On Archive as PDF/A-2, the output conforms to both PDF/A-2a and PDF/UA-1.
  • Enabling PDF/UA doubles page credits: 2 per page on Convert to PDF, 4 on Archive as PDF/A-2.
  • For more details, review PDF/UA accessibility.
• The Conversion Service validates the PDF/UA output against ISO 14289-1 and reports the requirements a document fails. For more details, review PDF/UA accessibility.
• Conversion jobs and tasks appear in your monitoring tool through the OpenTelemetry export, with the duration, page count, and queue wait of each job. For more details, review OpenTelemetry (OTLP).
• Standard Converter support for password-protected Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents using AES encryption, supplied with the DOC.PASSWORD option. For more details, review Office conversion.

Changed​

• Improvements to Office document conversion in the Standard Converter. The supported input formats and the profile options are unchanged. …

20 August 2026

Added​

• The thumbnails panel includes a counterclockwise rotation icon, letting viewer users rotate pages by -90°.
• The annotationColors option in ViewerConfig lets you define the color palette that viewer users can pick from annotation color pickers, either for all annotation types or per annotation type. To read or change the palette at runtime, use the getAnnotationColors() and setAnnotationColors() methods on PdfToolsViewer.

Changed​

• The text highlight top bar is replaced with a popover, following viewer design principles and improving user experience.
• On mobile and tablet devices, the viewer defaults to fit-to-page mode when opening documents.

Fixed​

• Before this update, setting the theme option in ViewerConfig during initialization did not apply the theme when it differed from the operating system preferences. With this update, the viewer correctly applies the configured theme regardless of OS preferences.
• Before this update, read-only form fields were editable. With this update, the viewer correctly prevents editing of read-only form fields.

12 August 2026

Fixed​

• Before this update, Toolbox add-on could calculate the color complexity of images that use indexed color spaces incorrectly, due to an index overflow and unchecked lookup-table access at the table boundaries. As a consequence, affected indexed images could render incorrectly. With this release, index handling prevents the overflow and lookup-table access is bounds-checked. As a result, indexed images render reliably.
• Before this update, Toolbox add-on for Java could fail to extract its native libraries when the Toolbox add-on JAR file was repackaged into another JAR. As a consequence, the runtime failed to start or load in some environments. With this release, native library extraction handles repackaged JARs correctly, and the extraction flow produces more detailed diagnostic information. As a result, runtime initialization is reliable for repackaged JARs, and loading issues are easier to investigate with Pdftools support.

12 August 2026

Fixed​

• Before this update, the Pdftools SDK could calculate the color complexity of images that use indexed color spaces incorrectly, due to an index overflow and unchecked lookup-table access at the table boundaries. As a consequence, affected indexed images could render incorrectly. With this release, index handling prevents the overflow and lookup-table access is bounds-checked. As a result, indexed images render reliably.
• Before this update, Pdftools SDK for Java could fail to extract its native libraries when the Pdftools SDK JAR file was repackaged into another JAR. As a consequence, the runtime failed to start or load in some environments. With this release, native library extraction handles repackaged JARs correctly, and the extraction flow produces more detailed diagnostic information. As a result, runtime initialization is reliable for repackaged JARs, and loading issues are easier to investigate with Pdftools support.

24 July 2026

Fixed​

• Before this update, the Toolbox add-on for Java extracted its native libraries to the temporary directory, where they accumulated over time. As a consequence, disk usage in the temporary directory grew with repeated use. With this release, the Toolbox add-on stores the extracted native libraries in a persistent per-user cache; if the cache location is unusable, the SDK falls back to extracting into the temporary directory. As a result, the libraries no longer accumulate, and initialization is faster after the first run.
• Before this update, the Toolbox add-on ignored color key masks (transparency) when rendering indexed images with fewer than 8 bits per component. As a consequence, masked pixels rendered opaque instead of transparent. With this release, the Toolbox add-on applies color key masks to these images, and masked pixels render transparent as expected.

23 July 2026

Added​

• displayName field on the workflow objects returned by the Advanced API List available workflows endpoint, so the Playground and other API clients can show a workflow’s human-readable name instead of its technical name.

Fixed​

This release fixes the following issues.

• The Standard Converter no longer omits watermarks defined in Word (.docx) documents from the converted PDF.
• Emails exported from Microsoft Word or Outlook, including messages forwarded through Gmail, no longer convert with a blank leading page caused by named-page markup in the exported HTML.
• The alt-text placeholder for a skipped external image no longer distorts the converted email’s layout when the image declares a width but no height.
• Configurator Web displays the correct major.minor.patch version; earlier releases read the assembly version and always showed the patch component as zero.
• Profile import in both Configurator Web and the Conversion Service Configurator compares only the major and minor version, so you can import a profile across patch releases within a minor line (for example, 6.12.1 into 6.12.0). …

23 July 2026

Added​

• Indexed (palette-based) PNG output
  Render PDF pages to smaller PNG files, suitable for thumbnails, web previews, and high-volume archiving. With this release, Pdftools SDK supports the PngColorSpace.Indexed color space for PNG output. Instead of a full color value, each pixel stores a short reference into a palette of up to 256 colors. Typical document pages, such as text, tables, and line art, contain only a few distinct colors. They keep their visual quality at a much smaller file size. Choose the palette size using the PngImageOptions.BitsPerPixel property. Indexed output is always opaque. For technical details, such as valid values, defaults, and error behavior, refer to the PngImageOptions API reference for your language:
  • C
  • Java
  • .NET
  • Python

Fixed​ …

9 July 2026

Added​

• Read the in-page scroll position of fit-height and fit-width bookmark destinations. The FitHeightDestination type exposes a Left property (the page location shown at the left border of the viewport), and the FitWidthDestination type exposes a Top property (the page location shown at the top of the viewport). Each returns null when the position before the jump is retained.

Changed​

• As of this release, Toolbox add-on no longer supports a glibc 2.12 build. The minimum supported glibc version is 2.17. Earlier releases of Toolbox add-on keep their glibc 2.12 build. If you need glibc 2.12 support in a newer releases of Toolbox add-on, contact Pdftools through the Contact page.

Fixed​

• Before this update, inspecting the font of an extracted text fragment through TextFragment.Font.BaseFont could crash the host application when the source PDF contained malformed font data, such as a missing FontDescriptor. As a consequence, applications that enumerated text fragments could terminate unexpectedly. With this release, the failure is reported as a regular SDK error, so applications can handle it gracefully. …

9 July 2026

Fixed​

• Before this update, the MRC optimizer removed the cmap and name tables from CID-only OpenType FontFile3 streams, producing font programs that strict OpenType validators rejected, although most viewers still rendered them correctly. With this release, table stripping is restricted to FontFile2 TrueType fonts, so embedded OpenType FontFile3 streams remain spec-compliant after optimization.

• Before this update, the ResolutionDPI and ThresholdDPI settings on the Web and MinimalFileSize optimization profiles affected only color and grayscale images, leaving bitonal images untouched. As a consequence, lowering the target resolution didn’t shrink files that contained high-resolution bitonal images. With this release, these settings also apply to bitonal images when explicitly configured.

• As of this release, Pdftools SDK no longer supports a glibc 2.12 build. The minimum supported glibc version is 2.17. Earlier releases of Pdftools SDK keep their glibc 2.12 build. If you need glibc 2.12 support in a newer releases of Pdftools SDK, contact Pdftools through the Contact page. …

9 July 2026

Fixed​

• Before this update, the ResolutionDPI and ThresholdDPI settings on the optimize-web and optimize-minimal profiles affected only color and grayscale images, leaving bitonal images untouched. As a consequence, lowering the target resolution didn’t shrink files that contained high-resolution bitonal images. With this release, these settings also apply to bitonal images when explicitly configured.

• Before this update, the revocation status of intermediate Certificate Authority (CA) certificates in the signing chain wasn’t reflected in the overall signature validity. As a consequence, a signature backed by a revoked intermediate CA could still be reported as valid. With this release, intermediate CA certificates are validated and their revocation propagates to the overall signature result.

• Before this update, post-analysis failures during PDF to PDF/A conversion were reported with a generic message that didn’t identify the object or page that caused the failure. As a consequence, applications had no diagnostic information to surface. With this release, the message includes the failing object ID, page number, and a count of any additional recorded errors.

8 July 2026

Added​

• A theming manager handles viewer CSS tokens with predefined light and dark themes. The theme option in ViewerConfig selects the active theme ('light', 'dark', or 'auto' for system preference). Developers can register custom themes using customThemes and override theme variables at runtime. Methods on PdfToolsViewer: addTheme(), clearThemeVariableOverrides(), getAvailableThemes(), getTheme(), overrideThemeVariables(), and setTheme().
• Viewer users can remove annotations using an eraser tool in the sidebar. Dragging a path deletes all overlapping annotations. A redaction-specific eraser removes only redaction annotations. Deleted annotations disappear from the document view, the annotation panel, and the redaction panel.
• The PDF Viewer SDK displays an alert when users close the tab or open a new document with unsaved changes. The promptOnUnsavedChange option in ViewerConfig controls this behavior (enabled by default).
• The disableMultipleImageInsert option in ViewerConfig deactivates the image annotation popover after each image is placed, preventing multiple insertions of the same image.

Changed​

• Theme configuration replaced …

26 May 2026

Added​

• Page-consumption reporting in verbose mode
  In verbose mode (-verbose), the Shell Tool prints the number of pages charged for the current conversion. For page-based licenses, it also reports the remaining page balance and any potential overconsumption, so you can track license usage without an external tool.

Changed​

• HEVC decoding library (libde265) is dynamically linked
  The libde265 library, which reads HEVC-encoded HEIF images, ships as a separate dynamically linked library. The native library requires the HEIF/HEIC decoding library at load time, even if your application doesn’t use HEIF/HEIC functionality. If Pdftools SDK Shell Tool can’t find the libde265 decoding library, it fails to load. Pdftools SDK Shell Tool includes the required binaries. Action: After updating, verify that your deployment can still decode HEVC-encoded HEIF images.

Fixed​

• Before this update, the optimize-web and optimize-minimal profiles didn’t downsample or recompress bitonal (scanned black-and-white) images, so optimizing a scanned PDF produced a file roughly the same size as the input. With this release, the profiles downsample bitonal images and re-encode them with JBIG2. As a result, scanned documents optimize to substantially smaller files.

Versions earlier than 1.13.0 are no longer available …

24 April 2026

Added​

• ocr command for making PDFs searchable
  The new ocr command applies OCR to a PDF from the command line. It connects to a Pdftools OCR Service instance, recognizes text in scanned images, fixes non-extractable text, and can add accessibility tagging. Example: pdf in.pdf ocr -ocr service -oim updateText out.pdf. For full options and examples, refer to OCR a PDF with the Shell Tool.
• -lgs option for the Licensing Gateway Service endpoint
  If you use a page-credit license key, you can configure the Licensing Gateway Service (LGS) endpoint directly from the command line using -lgs <url>. The URL accepts the form (http|https)://[user[:password]@]host[:port]. When you don’t specify the option, Pdftools SDK Shell Tool uses the default licensing endpoint.
• -d option for dithering control in Fax image conversion
  The Fax conversion profile exposes a dithering option, letting you switch between Halftone (default), None, FloydSteinberg, and Atkinson when rendering PDFs to fax-ready images. For more details, refer to Fax conversion profile.

Fixed​ …

11 March 2026

Changed​

• HEIF/HEIC codec library dynamically linked

  The native library requires the HEIF/HEIC decoding library at load time, even if your application doesn’t use HEIF/HEIC functionality. If the decoding library isn’t found, the native library fails to load. The required binaries are included in the distribution, but ensure your service, container layout, library search paths, and permissions allow the library to be found.

  Action: After updating, verify that your deployment loads correctly even if HEIF/HEIC processing is not used.

• JBIG2 decoding update

  The JBIG2 decoding implementation has been replaced. JBIG2-encoded images render identically, but error messages related to JBIG2 processing may differ from previous versions.

  Action: If you process PDFs with JBIG2-encoded images, consider validating against a representative document set.

• Updated font substitution for missing fonts (including PDF/A)

  When PDFs reference fonts that aren’t embedded and are unavailable on the host, the software substitutes fallback fonts. The updated fallback fonts support a larger glyph set and better fitting to original glyph dimensions. Layout should remain stable, but visual appearance differs from both the original font and previous versions.

  Action: If exact reproduction is required, install the original font in your environment. …

29 October 2025

Added​

• Enhanced logging configuration environment variables:
  • PDFT_LOG_OUTPUT for output control, replacing PDF_TRACE_OUTPUT. The PDF_TRACE_OUTPUT also remains supported for backward compatibility.
  • PDFT_LOG for log level filters. The comma-separated format: *:error,libbase:info, where * sets the default level.

Changed​

• Switched from the zlib to zlib-ng library, significantly improving performance when compressing and decompressing Flate streams by using SIMD instructions.

Fixed​

• Correct the usage text for the render-archive operation as there is no -max option in the general options.
• Corrected conformance retrieval logic in the GetConformance method to properly handle invalid ConversionOptions values.
• Certificate loading on Windows now includes Local Machine store in addition to Current User store, resolving certificate access issues for Internet Information Services (IIS) applications running under service accounts.

16 September 2025

Fixed​

• Resolved an issue using an uninitialized variable that could cause unpredictable behavior during PNG processing.
• Fixed a stack buffer overflow when creating annotation appearances.
• Corrected glyph position problems caused by improper handling of adjustment values.
• Ensured the GTS_PDFX output intent is correctly copied into the output document to maintain PDF/X compliance. The GTS_PDFX defines the standardized printing output intent for PDF/X files.
• Fixed an infinite loop that could occur during optimization for specific malformed PDF files.
• Addressed an access violation related to cross-reference (xref) tables, preventing potential crashes.

23 April 2025

Added​

• Add the support to embedding files during a PDF/A conversion: embedding files can be associated to the converted PDF
• Add fit page option to the import image functionality: all images will be scaled to fit the page size (including enlarging smaller images).
• Improved support for HEIC files.

Fixed​

• Fixed a bug that caused crashes when handling JPEG images with the Pdftools SDK on 32-bit Windows systems.
• Improved handling of faulty PostScript string syntax to ensure correct parsing of ToUnicode maps.
• Previously, document timestamps (ETSI.RFC3161) were not recognized if the PDF lacked an explicit declaration of the correct signature type. This update ensures that timestamps are correctly validated as long as the signature itself is valid and the signed content remains intact.
• Previously, rendering PDFs with the wrong alternate colorspaces could cause the Pdftools SDK to crash. With this update, the rendering engine now falls back to CMYK rendering if the alternate color transform cannot be created, preventing the crash.
• Previously, under certain circumstances, a regression caused the decryption of encrypted PDFs to fail. The issue is fixed with this release.